Kampala, Uganda

A few weekends ago I flew to the other side of Lake Victoria, to the Ugandan side, and landed at the airport in Entebbe, a small town about 40 km from Kampala, Uganda’s capital. On approach, I saw less water hyacinth and murky brown water than I do from the Kisumu shores, and much more water activity. My small Kenyan Airways flight shared a crowded tarmac with elephant-sized white planes marked on their fuselage with the black letters of the UN. Men and women wearing camouflage and light blue berets filled the airport, waiting to board the planes for Sudan. I looked at them with wonderment and awe for what they do (and where they were headed), but moved on past, grabbed my luggage and headed for the car to Kampala where I would spend the weekend exploring the city and rafting on the White Nile.

We drove the one, straight, well-paved rode from Entebbe to Kampala slowly. There is always only one road to get anywhere, no short-cuts or bypasses, causing lots of traffic jams. But, I never mind the drive because it gives me the opportunity to observe carefully the roadside activity. All over Kampala, in fact, I found the infrastructure much better than in Kenya and everything appeared cleaner, more modern and better built. Much of Kampala suffered during the Idi Amin dictatorship in the 1970s, followed by the Ugandan loss in war with Tanzania in 1979 and the subsequent tribal wars that took place before Yoweri Museveni, the current President, came to power in 1986. Uganda prospered (relatively speaking) in the 1990s and Museveni rebuilt much that had been destroyed.

We kept the windows down as we drove along and it was hot, very tropical, with thick air. Uganda is very green and lush, a sense exaggerated even more by all of the green bananas sold along the road. I have never seen more bananas and would ask everyone whether, or how, these roadside sellers possibly sold all of their bananas. They do though, everyone would tell me. Looking up from the green bananas along the road into the distance, I could see the seven green hills on which Kampala is built – making it a really beautiful city. I stayed on Nakasero hill in the city centre at the Speke Hotel, one of the oldest in Kampala.

This is the place of “jua kali” my taxi driver told me as we inched towards Kampala. “Jua kali” means hot sun in Kiswahili and represents the thousands of men and women who work in the informal sector of Kenya and Uganda. All day long, under the hot East African sun, these men and women work in their small workshops along the road. You can hear the clinking of hammers and the whirring of saws as they bang out wooden and iron furniture, pots, auto parts and other handicrafts. Their work is harsh, and done under unsafe and unregulated conditions. However, it is an important part of the economy. In Kenya, the informal sector accounts for over 90% of all businesses and, I’m told, contributes about 15% of Kenya’s GDP. In Kisumu, this informal sector comprises over 50% of the working population and the workers involved in it make about $40-50 per month.

After I checked into my hotel and spent an hour trying to find an ATM that accepted a MasterCard (none did), I quickly ate a Chinese lunch at a restaurant called Fang Fang and set out with yet another driver to tour Kampala. I told him I wanted to see everything, and we did, winding our way around all seven hills. We saw a variety of religious buildings: the National Mosque in Lower Kampala, started by Idi Amin and completed with funding from Colonel Gadaffi; the Namirembe Anglican Cathedral where I made the driver wait while I watched women guests parade into a wedding in many pastel colored ball gowns; and the Baha’i Temple, the only one on the African continent (the one in North American is outside Chicago), set on beautiful grounds high above Kampala. I took a somewhat touristy, but interesting, tour of the Kasubi Tombs, the burial place for several Ugandan kings, including the father of the current King Mutebi II, whose role is only ceremonial these days. The large thatched pyramidal-shaped tomb is surrounded by small thatched buildings where descendants of the wives of Muteesa I – he had 84! – live and take care of the tombs. Winding our way around, we continued through the campus of Makere University with its stark white and blue-shuttered buildings; past Mulaga Hospital, the biggest in Uganda; and down Gayaza Road which runs right through the slums of Kampala. And, everywhere I noticed the largest, ugliest, meanest looking vulture-like bird I had ever seen – flocks of them sitting on tops of tree – the maribu stork, which migrates to Kampala to breed 4 months out of the year.

After spending a full day driving around Kampala, I had Indian food – the best I’ve had so far in East Africa – at an open air restaurant called Khana Khazana in Kololo hills, a nice residential area where all the expats live. Then, Saturday morning I awoke early to head for my rafting trip on the White Nile…

(Pictured: Maribu storks in a tree outside my hotel; me outside the entrance to the Kasubi Tombs; banana sellers along road)

What I Do Here On A (Somewhat) Daily Basis

Someone recently asked me about what I do in Nairobi and Kisumu on a more daily basis, when I’m not out traveling. I have told you a bit about the Millennium Cities Initiative (MCI) and, in a general way, about our work in trying to increase foreign investment opportunities into Kisumu that will be sustainable, improve the lives of the people and help Kisumu achieve the Millennium Development Goals. To that end, and since MCI has just begun, a lot of my time has been spent gathering information, working with the city government to build its capacity to promote investments, meeting local business people to educate them about MCI and to understand better the business environment and coordinating with various partners, such as several UN agencies, to organize various parts of MCI. I sort of serve as the ambassador on the ground here, trying to coordinate all the players, keep things moving forward and make sure communication happens.

So here, from my calendar over the past week and a half, are some of the things I did, both for work and pleasure, in Nairobi and Kisumu:

Wednesday: Met with consultants and trainers for a very large, global packaging, automotive and power tool technology company from India to discuss their running a training program for mid-skilled workers in Kisumu. In the evening, went to the sports diver class at the Nairobi Dive Club where, every Wednesday, they also serve dinner and the best Bloody Mary’s outside of NYC.

Thursday: Met with a senior executive from Unilever, now working for the Business Alliance Against Chronic Hunger (BAACH), and a woman from the World Economic Forum to discuss ways that MCI and BAACH can partner, such as by working together to bring agro-processing and packaging investments into Kisumu. We also discussed the potential for a major fashion company which has contacted BAACH to make handbags and shoes out of the Nile Perch and also support programs for women in the fishing industry in Kisumu.

Friday: Attended an MDG Centre staff meeting in the morning where I heard about all of the work being done at the Millennium Villages, and updated everyone on MCI. Afterwards, I met with the senior editor for Africa from the Economist Intelligence Unit (part of the Economist Magazine) to discuss the business roundtable to be co-hosted between the Economist and MCI in July. That night, listened to a Ghanian drum band at the French Cultural Institute in Nairobi and had a fantastic Ethiopian dinner at a restaurant called Habeesha.

Monday: First thing that morning, I attended my weekly Kiswahili lesson with two friends from MDG Centre. Midday, I met with the Kenyan Investment Authority to discuss working with the Kisumu municipal council on investment promotion. That night, I had dinner at a good Indian restaurant in Nairobi, called Open House, with a Columbia University professor and some of his graduate students, working with the Kenyan government on rural electrification (the percentage of people living outside Kenyan cities who have electricity lies in the single digits!).

Tuesday: That morning, I flew to Kisumu and headed straight for a meeting with a local business woman and members of the city council office to discuss a project in which the city would hand over management of 5 Kisumu parks to local businesses who then would rehabilitate them. That afternoon I met with the Kisumu Chamber of Commerce to talk to them about MCI and find out about local businesses among their membership. I had dinner that night at my hotel, the Imperial Hotel, with a former Columbia graduate student, working around Kisumu for a few months, to test various low-cost and energy efficient lighting sources for people.

Wednesday: I had breakfast with a woman to discuss contacts in the construction industry in Kisumu. At 10:30 I began a 2 hour drive out to the Mumias sugar factory (the largest in Kenya, producing over 60% of the sugar here). I toured the factory and learned a lot about how Mumias uses the bagasse from sugar cane to generate electricity and about the potential for ethanol production from the molasses. I had dinner with the head of tax at Mumias and his wife, that evening at the Mumias Club, before making it back to Kisumu around midnight.

Thursday: I had an early morning golf lesson! Then went back to the municipal council office to discuss the development of an investment promotion office there. I had lunch that day in the home of the family that owns the Imperial Hotel (as well as a fish factory and a bakery in Kisumu). That afternoon I met with the Kisumu branch of the Kenya Association of Manufacturers, mainly to discuss their work lobbying the national government on infrastructure issues around Kisumu – the cost of goods is very high here primarily because of all the infrastructure problems. I flew back to Nairobi that evening.

Friday: That morning I attended an early breakfast meeting at the Jacaranda Hotel in Nairobi, with yet another Columbia University professor, to discuss finding a business in Kisumu that has the capability to partner with a major electronics company on the manufacture of fuel-efficient and smokeless cookstoves for use by women. I spent most of the rest of the day catching up on correspondence at the MDG Centre in Nairobi. That evening I flew to Mombasa with two friends from the Nairobi Dive Club to do some diving there over the weekend.

Pictures of My Guards

For some reason, or many reasons, the pictures did not post with my last blog, "My Guards." Top is Sylvester; Bottom pic is Joseph. As always, double click to enlarge these photos.

My Guards

That’s Sylvester (top pic), our day guard. He arrives at 6:00 a.m. and leaves at 6:00 p.m. All day long he sits outside the little green guard box behind our big iron gate, in front of our big house. I suppose he protects my brand new washing machine and Cristina’s brand new oven, because we don’t have much else in that house. We’ve been worried about him feeling bored. We asked him if he wanted the newspaper, something to read. No, that’s ok, he said. Then, we asked him if he wanted to make a little extra money by doing yard work for us. Of course, he did. But he did not want to wear the blue apron that Cristina bought to protect his uniform, even though the men at the Nakumatt grocery store told Cristina a man would wear it – it’s blue after all. So, there’s Sylvester, cutting our grass with a machete. Small patches at a time, he whacks away at the grass. Most grass in Kenya is cut in this manner, we are not the only ones without a lawn mower. But, we think he cut it way too short this first time, as we can see the dirt. ****

I took that picture of Sylvester a few Saturdays ago, right after I locked myself out of my house at 9:00 a.m. I had gone out to pay Sylvester for two weeks of yard work. Cristina had already left to go hiking in the Ngong Hills just outside of Nairobi. (I couldn’t go hiking as I had a baby shower to attend that afternoon- something I never expected to do in Nairobi!) Sylvester could not reach his security company on the phone. I told him to push the panic button he wears around his neck, I was in a hurry. Cristina and I also have our own panic buttons, but we don’t wear them.

So Sylvester pushed the panic button. This will be interesting, I thought. Amazingly, the reaction time was quick; five minutes and up to the front gate rushed a truck with 4 more guards and a car with 2 diplomatic police carrying AK-47s. Ok, good, certainly these men will find a way to get me into my house, I assumed. Incorrectly. 45 minutes later, they had walked around and around the house, staring at the dozens of locks, tugging on all the bars covering the windows and doors but, nope, no way to get in this house, they told me. That should make my security-obsessed housemate, Cristina, happy, I thought, but I need in the house…shower, baby gift, money, cell phone. Try not to cry yet, I told myself. And don’t be bitchy, I also told myself, it’s not their fault after all.

Can you call a locksmith then, I asked the 7 men standing in my driveway? They all looked around at each other with shrugged shoulders, puzzled by my request. There has got to be someone in Nairobi who can get into this house, right, I pleaded, now about to cry? Ok, they finally decided to place a few calls and after another 15 minutes, found someone. Thank you! How long? 20 minutes.

One hour later, with 5 more phone calls placed and plenty of pacing done, I walked up to the truck where all 7 of them were sitting, piled into the front and in the back bed, each reading the Daily Nation newspaper. You all might as well go if you don’t have a solution to this, I told them, why are you just sitting here? Whoops, I meant not to be bitchy. They tried to track the locksmith down again. He’s almost here, they told me, again.

12:00 struck. One hour to the baby shower. I walked around to the front window of my house. Through the window I could see my keys lying on the dining room table. Look, I said to Sylvester, my keys are so close, but so far. As I stood there staring longingly at them, Sylvester did the sensible thing and tried the window. Miraculously, it slid open. I wonder if Cristina knew that window was unlocked, I thought? My keys teased me from 10 feet away, with nothing between us but iron bars. Again, Sylvester proved sensible and chopped a very long tree branch down, tied wire to it, and after a few attempts, managed to hook my keys and carefully pull them out the house! All the other security guards and police clapped and slapped Sylvester on the back. I felt really proud of him and also glad that I had provided him some morning entertainment. He then went back to cutting the grass. ****

And, that’s Joseph (bottom pic), our night guard. He arrives at 6:00 p.m. and leaves at 6:00 a.m. His job is worse, but he has company. That’s Uli with him. Uli arrives at 6:30 p.m. and leaves at 5:30 a.m. All night long Joseph and Uli sit outside the little green guard box behind our big iron gate, in front of our big house. Poor Joseph though, has to get up – and I mean wake up – every hour and walk to the side of our house a few hundred meters away to push a button notifying the security company that he is awake. The button is on my side of the house, so I usually get up every hour as well, as I hear Joseph and Uli stomping through the grass below my window. Then the entire neighborhood gets to wake up at 5:30 every morning to a dog concert. Every dog wakes and howls, bidding Uli good-bye. Until later that day. ****

Cristina and I will watch Sylvester and Joseph from the windows, usually sitting in the chair we bought them, in front of the little green guard box, staring out at our big iron gate. It makes us uncomfortable, them simply sitting there. They don’t eat all shift long. We don’t understand why they don’t bring some food. If I had that job I’d eat all day long, I say, out of boredom. We offer them coffee and fruit and biscuits. Cristina has to be one of the kindest people I’ve met in Nairobi. She is very sweet to the guards and to Ruth, our housekeeper. She recently bought Ruth a beautiful piece of fabric from Mozambique. Ruth turned it into a beautiful long skirt.

Cristina worries about Ruth, though. She thinks Ruth is engaged in “inappropriate relations” with Sylvester. This is a common occurrence between the house help and guards in Nairobi, we are told, and Cristina picked up on it immediately. Without delay, she talked to Ruth about it. If you must, ok, but just not in our house, she told her, instead use the servant’s quarters. (As nice as he is, still, Sylvester should not come in our house.) Cristina is Italian, up-front and blunt; these things do not bother her. I, a prudish American, blush every time Cristina talks about it; I’m so glad I was not present for her talk with Ruth. Ruth is 30 and seems naïve. Be careful Ruth, Cristina continues, warning, you know, these guards are just bored, they have nothing else to do, so don’t anything from them. I don’t want you to get hurt.

Cristina has become a little obsessed with this, though, and will call Sylvester during the day and ask him to pass the phone to Ruth while counting the footsteps it takes him to reach her. You wouldn’t believe it, she exclaimed to me one day last week, he basically just handed the phone to her! Another conversation with Ruth then occurred; also, this time, with Sylvester. I wouldn’t do that, Sylvester told her, he’s a Christian. Yeah, Cristina said to him, and you are also a man. I blush again. She warned them both that one would be fired if she finds out anything happens in the house. I hope they get the message, because I like both Ruth and Sylvester. ****

Uh-oh… As I write this, upstairs in my bedroom sitting on the one piece of furniture I have in my bedroom, a bed, Cristina and one of her Italian friends come into the house. I hear commotion. Her friend has accidentally pushed our panic button in the kitchen, thinking it’s a light switch. Here come the guards…

Fishing on Lake Victoria

The French Cultural Institute here in Nairobi is housed in a very modern building and plays host to a number of very good cultural events. Over the past two months, I have been there twice to hear Kenyan musicians play – Eric Wainaina and Susanna Owiyo, two popular Kenyan pop fusion musicians (Susanna is from Kisumu and sings a song called “Kisumu 100”). Also a few weeks ago I saw the documentary “Darwin’s Nightmare” there. I recommend this film which was filmed on shores of Lake Victoria, on the Tanzanian side, in a town called Mwanza. It concerns the fishing industry on Lake Victoria and, specifically, the fishing for Nile Perch. The film argues that the introduction of the Nile Perch (or “mbuta”) into the Lake in the 1950s has destroyed the natural ecosystem there and led to the exploitation of fishermen and women by mostly European fish processing companies and distributors.

As part of the Millennium Cities work, we are examining the fishing industry on Lake Victoria, the possibility for its growth and, importantly, how future investments in the industry can be sustainable, improve lives and help Kisumu achieve the Millennium Development Goals. There are about 54,000 fishermen in the Lake. Nile Perch accounts for 2/3 of their catch, the remaining being tilapia and smaller fish such as the butterfish. Currently, fish from Lake Victoria earns about $590 million annually, $340 million generated at the source and another $250 million from export of the Nile Perch to European Markets. Europeans love the Nile Perch but, I have been told, it has been hard to market it in the U.S. because of the perception that anything deriving from the Nile would not be clean. Kenyans also do not care much for Nile Perch, but prefer instead tilapia. The Kenyan portion of Lake Victoria is only about 6% but the waters should be open to all properly licensed fishermen from any of the East African countries that border the Lake (Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda). However, in reality, Kenyan fishermen who cross into another country’s territory find themselves face to face with armed pirates or, supposedly, even corrupt fishing authorities who steal, extort and, at worst, kill.

Pirates are just one of the many problems facing the fishing industry. Starting with the Lake itself, arguably, there is no potential to increase the size of the catch of fish in it. Possibly even the number will decline, as the Lake faces environmental and man-made problems, some for decades. Some environmentalists have gone so far as to predict the disappearance of the Lake in 100 years. Drought and the Kiira damn in Uganda have decreased water levels. The Nile Perch, a predator, has said to have killed over 200 species of other fish and contributed to decreased oxygen levels in the Lake. The Lake is polluted from sewage and other run-off pouring down from encircling hills, as well as other manmade activities. I have seen dozens of men eke out a living by washing cars on the shores of the Lake in Kisumu, an illegal activity to which everyone has turned a blind eye. No one swims or boats in the Lake anymore. I have been to the Kisumu Yacht Club for dinner and observed only one wooden yacht in the yard that does not look like it could float. Finally, there has not been much control over the number of fishermen and the methods of fishing used on the Lake. We are examining the potential for fish farming, but the costs of production are quite high and land and irrigation problems are many.

There is the water hyacinth. Flying into Kisumu, I always request a window seat so I can examine the state of the water hyacinth – the thick, lily-pad shaped, waxy dark green leaves, with pretty lavender flowers, that float freely on the surface of the Lake – one of the world’s most noxious weeds. It comes and goes. At its height in 1998, the water hyacinth covered 77 square miles of the Lake. With aggressive removal efforts, by 2005, the Lake was almost clear. But due to high rains in late 2006, agricultural run-off and sediment fed a fresh outbreak of the hyacinth. It reappeared and as a result, today, most of the Kisumu bay is covered in the green hyacinth. Flying into Kisumu, I often think I am seeing land, but it is the thick massive mat of the hyacinth. Due to this, fishermen cannot launch boats or bring fish to the shore; sunlight cannot penetrate to feed plants; dying plants cause fish and animals to starve; and water flow is impeded and irrigation pipes are clogged. We are looking at uses for the hyacinth (e.g., fertilizer, paper) and ways to rid the Lake of it.

There are the many problems beset by the fishermen and women on the shores. I spent one early morning at a fishing village called Dunga, just on the outskirts of Kisumu. The men, most whom cannot swim, spend 12 hours a day out on the Lake in simple wooden boats powered by splintered oars and tattered sails. I was there at 7:00 a.m. to watch them row furiously into shore with their catch. There is nothing modern about this process: no fancy hi-tech vessels or equipment, only those that have been used for decades; no docks, only landing beaches on the shoreline; no refrigeration facilities, either on board or on shore; and no sophisticated marketing organization to help them store, bargain and control the price of their catch. The middlemen await fishermen on shore and offer to pay deflated prices that the fishermen must accept since they have no alternatives except to see their fish rot.

The local impoverished men and women often cannot afford to buy the fish, even the Nile Perch and tilapia deemed too small for the factories. Mostly, they are left scrounging for meat off of left-over fish skeletons sold back to the fishing community by the factories. Prostitution is rampant along the shores, women sell themselves for fish; HIV/AIDs is unbelievably high among the fishermen and women; orphans are many. After the men pulled on shore in Dunga and sold the few large fish that were big enough for the distributors. The women, probably 50 in all, rushed the shore to try to bargain for small, sardine-like fish – we would call it bait – paying nickels and dimes so that they can have this food to feed their families or to resell in Dunga.

Then, later that day after visiting the fishing village, I toured a fish factory which mostly sells fish fillets to European and other international markets. After donning white coats, boats and hard hats and managing to suppress my gag instinct throughout the tour, I realized the potential for much expansion of product offerings in the fish industry in Kisumu: bladders can be used for beer flavoring and surgical sutures; fish oil can be used for drugs because of high omega 3 fatty acids; fish scales can be used in collagen; fish skins can be used for purses and shoes; and prepared meals and canned fish could be processed. So, there seems that there is a lot more investment that could be made in the fish industry – whether in fish farming, hyacinth removal, fish processing – but a lot more work that needs to be done to make sure that the investments also improve the lives of the local men, women and children living in Dunga, and other fishing villages in and around Kisumu!

(Pictured: Fishing boats on Lake Victoria; Fisherman holding up a Nile Perch; Young boy buys small fish for a few shillings, crowds of women behind him behind left-over fish as well. Click to enlarge photos)